Israel

08 Sep 2022; MEMO: Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz said yesterday that it is the Israeli army, not the US, which determines Israel's open-fire policies, Axios reported.

"IDF's chief of the general staff, and he alone, determines, and will continue to determine the rules of engagement in accordance with our operational needs and values of the IDF," Gantz said, according to the news site.

05 Sep 2022; MEMO: Israeli Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman yesterday described opposition leader and Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the "scum of the human race who has no red lines," the Times of Israel reported.

Lieberman, leader of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu Party, was asked to comment on allegations that he had offered to pay $100,000 to kill a police director.

He rejected the allegations and said this was a smear campaign orchestrated by Likud leader Netanyahu.

05 Sep 2022; MEMO: In one of the largest protests against Israeli apartheid, more than 300 filmmakers signed a petition in which they refuse to cooperate with the Shomron Film Fund.  Oscar-nominated filmmakers were amongst the signatories who slammed the fund as being "part of the apartheid mechanism". Shomron is the Hebrew word for Samaria – which is the Biblical name of the occupied West Bank.

05 Sep 2022; MEMO: The US Air Force yesterday flew two nuclear-capable B-52 bombers over the Gulf, passing through Israeli airspace, amid tensions with Iran.

Israeli media reported that the American bombers entered Israeli airspace on their way to the Arabian Gulf, escorted by Israel's F-16i fighter jets.

05 Sep 2022; MEMO: The US Ambassador to Israel has said that he has "aggressively engaged" with the Israeli government over its new rules for foreigners visiting the occupied West Bank. The rules devised by COGAT, the Israeli Defence Ministry body concerned with Palestinian civil affairs, have been widely condemned.

05 Sep 2022; MEMO: A Palestinian journalist from the Arab Israeli city of Umm Al-Fahm was shot and killed in his car yesterday evening. According to eyewitnesses, two masked men approached the car in which Nadal Ijbaria was sitting and shot him in the head at close range before fleeing the scene.

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military on Monday announced the long-awaited results of its investigation into the deadly shooting of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, saying there was a “high probability” an Israeli soldier had mistakenly killed her during a raid in the occupied West Bank last May.

HAIFA, Israel, Sept 4 (Reuters) - A Turkish warship has docked in Israel for the first such visit in more than a decade as relations between the U.S. allies improve following fierce feuding over the Palestinian cause.

The frigate Kemalreis docked in Haifa on Saturday as part of NATO manoeuvres in the Mediterranean sea, a Turkish official said. An Israeli official said Ankara had submitted a preliminary request for the crew to disembark on shore leave.

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military said that Palestinian gunmen opened fire on a bus in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, wounding six soldiers, one of them seriously, and a civilian.

The Magen David Adom paramedic service said two people who suffered gunshot wounds were airlifted by helicopter to a hospital in Haifa.

The Israeli military said it apprehended two Palestinians suspected of carrying out the midday attack on a main West Bank highway.

03 September 2022; MEMO: The Israeli Beersheba District Court yesterday rejected an appeal to remove the "terrorism" classification under which Palestinian prisoner Ahmad Manasra is being held, in spite of the fact that he was detained at the age of 13 in a brutal manner, violently interrogated without an adult or lawyer present and then held in jail even though he did not carry out a crime.